Through the Veil

Just before the start of Budha’s third retrograde state this year (September 17, 2015) I started feeling an intense amount of energy surging through my body. Over time this energy has increased – so much that I could not, can not, contain it. I can’t stand still with this energy, this prāṇa, and without a constant avenue for its release it feels as if it has started to decompose my body.

On the night of the lunar eclipse, September 28, 2015, while Budha was still in retrograde motion, I was not under the stress of my current level of energy. I felt that I was on the doorstep of change, that I had a chance to go somewhere that I hadn’t been for a very long time. After an intense meditation under the eclipsing moon I felt transformed. And now, details of the re-induction aside, I was allowed to see through the veil again. I often think back to other times and sometimes wonder if the patterns, messages, and different feelings of existence that I experience are either exaggerated or fabricated attempts to regain access to something I had lost over 15 years ago, when Rāhu last transited my lagna’s lord.

But now I know now that they were definitely real. The world speaks to me in subtle ways, but only under certain circumstances. Some people work hard to reach such an enlightened state of realization. Some are blessed with it and can access it much easier than others. Some of us, who have not worked out all of our materialized issues, suffer from physical problems and feel afflicted by the blessing. Such is why there is an order that great sages suggest we follow. Get your Self in order before you reach an enlightened state. And so, coincidentally, I just happened to have started the process before I was again gifted.

Astrologically, Sūrya, Rāhu, and Budha were all transiting Kanyā (Virgo) and my natal Candra, my lagna’s lord, during the period in which I saw deepest through the veil, with Budha in retrograde (disabled from its norm, allowing for more mental freedom, less rational restraint, and vikalpa). Budha retrograde through Kanyā/Virgo sounds like a wonderful period for everyone interested in connecting with the Truth, but for some reason, for me, perhaps due to my level of sensitivity, I have been having a hard time with the transmutations of the energy that’s entering my body. This won’t happen again until I’m in my mid-50s.

Breadcrumbs & Thoughts

Topics, thoughts, messages come to me one after one like beads on a mala. It’s like a conversation, a stream of consciousness, and each means something profound.

I feel that I must attempt to communicate what seems impossible to communicate via language. Words don’t always work. The most profound are the shortest lived and don’t survive long enough in my mind to come to life. They’re too profound to be contained. My rational mind makes me believe that perhaps it should be more flexible. I don’t want to lose something this profound, especially once I finally find the words to describe it (which happened yesterday morning). When I thought back to the time of day in which I realized the verbiage (to try to recall the message), it felt like I was in a waking dream state, like I was seeing and participating in the world from some other realm. Like I was dreaming, but I was functioning in the real world.

Are these thoughts, these messages that come to me like letters addressed directly to me, but passed along in a clandestine manner. These messages feel to me like the beads on a mala… more like the spaces between them, the beads representing the solid collection of masses formed by their own gravitational pull in this material realm, while messages of Truth lie in the spaces between. These clues, which materialize in the material, continue to clarify, then lead to additional clues only when I seek and follow the right, true path. The messages, the answers, the download, reside in the spaces, the pauses, and focusing on them slows down time and makes the world quiet, calmer, less animated and more like a dark organic sculpture garden. I find that a true test of whether or not a message is a message is when I catch myself trying to answer back (or try to reach for a notebook that isn’t there). When I motion, when I attempt to bring this nirvikalpa into a vikalpa-ruled world, it disappears and the world continues its animation. It slips through the fingers of my rational mind. I find it easier to remain with this alternate vision only under a certain humble, acknowledging, grateful understanding established with the collective oneness.

Breadcrumbs & Language

Language interferes too much with the true meaning of an idea.

Only when you ask the right questions will the right answers come. The answers you seek will come only when you ask the right questions. The answers you seek will manifest when you follow the truth. Validation that you’re seeking the true path (swimming in the right path/asking the right questions) will present itself frequently through signs (some subtle, and some glaring) to let you know you’re on the right path… so long as you can see enough through the veil to notice (and especially) acknowledge them. Answers are everywhere!

Acknowledgement (not dismissal) of these communications are vital to continuing the path of breadcrumbs. But communicating these, frustratingly, leads me away from the path.

His Saktis are always in readiness in veiling his essential real Self because all his ideas cannot arise without the use of words. – Spanda-Karika 3.13

The basis of all the three malas is word-bound ideas. The words are a reflex of the letters and their sound known as Mātṛkā, so, ultimately it is Mātṛkā which is responsible for the limited knowledge i.e. the three malas. Words have a tremendous influence in shaping our ideas which do not allow us to realize the splendour of Siva-consciousness imprisoned within ourselves. – Śiva Sūtras 1.4, exposition by Jaideva Singh

There are so many ways to word it, but none sound right in English. Perhaps English is the problem. There are believed to be at least three ways to translate ancient Sanskrit into English… it’s likely that using Sanskrit is more appropriate, but it’s not just language but also the constructs of the rational mind also prevent the birth of this knowledge into an entity that can be preserved in human memory.

It is Siddha, an everpresent Fact, not sādhya, not something to be brought into being by our efforts. It cannot be caught by our vikalpa-jala, by the net of our thought constructs, however cleverly we may cast it. The more we try to catch it, the more we try to grasp it, the more it does recede from us. We are prisoners of our own mind. Thought has to commit suicide in order to know our real Self, the Śiva within ourselves. Vikalpa, the dichotimizing activity of our mind has to cease, the wheel of imagination has to stop. The ghost of our discursive intellect has to be laid to rest, before we are allowed to realize our essential Self. – Śiva Sūtras, introduction by Jaideva Singh, p. xxxiv

No doubt, this is exactly what I’ve realized these past few days. I’ve always wondered why I seem to be able to see through the veil so much easier during Mercury retrograde periods. This makes sense. Mercury is slightly disabled, allowing the Self to be better realized and for the world around us to show as it is in its true reality.

Truth
.
Vibrations
.
Zeal
.
Jñāna
.
Maya
.
Bondage (SS xxix)
…

Divine Assistance

Swami Sukhabodhananda’s commentary on the Śiva Sūtras has been a wonderful companion to my current journey. It has proven to support my thoughts and help expand my ideas, including those of finding a way to stop the ongoing one-after-another landslide of hardships.

So to get over one problem, you invite another problem. This is called complicated living. Then you take drugs, ecstasy, crack, cocaine and then ask if there is any yoga or prāṇayam to drop the drug. First tell me why you took drugs. All these things are the opposite of simplicity. – Swami Sukhabodhananda, Śiva Sūtras

Future thinking can be like poison. It taints our present, potentially steering us in false directions. I have always been an advocate of going with the flow and have never prescribed to the idea of a 5-year plan. Perhaps this is why. Now offers the truth. All else is speculation. It offers the most positive and realistic view and opportunity.

Simplicity first means to be in the moment. And the moment is really complete. It is the thought that is incomplete. Second, simplicity means be in harmony with what is. Once you learn to be in harmony with what is, then you will not create conflict with what is. Complicated people create conflict with what is. Simple people will create harmony with what is. – Swami Sukhabodhananda, Śiva Sūtras

The material world is harsh on so many of us, and it is those of us who are the most sensitive that both have the ability to tune in and also are most subject to being lost in the muck. I have always been very sensitive.

Energy in motion is emotion. Understand that the quality of your life is the quality of your consistent emotion. If you have negative emotions, your life will be miserable. – Swami Sukhabodhananda, Śiva Sūtras

You want to keep your head above water… The older you get, the deeper you sink, the harder it is to maintain. We start fresh, unchanged by the world. The more we fold ourselves in, the more attached we get, the more we get carried away, the farther we’re removed from our cleaner, initial manifestation.

If a strong emotion suddenly lights all the candles we carry inside ourselves, it creates a brightness that shines far beyond our normal vision and then a splendid tunnel appears that shows us the way that we forgot when we were born and calls us to recover our lost divine origin. The soul longs to return to the place it came from, leaving the body lifeless. – Like Water for Chocolate

Synchronicities

The synchronicities happen even outside of my own environment. I sent a text message to someone yesterday describing how my eyes felt like they were popping out, and at the moment he received the message his son simultaneously shared the fact that his video game character’s eyeballs had just popped out. I was very conscious in what I said, and I had waited a while before I sent the message. Not for any reason other than it wasn’t the right time. I find myself externalizing my coincidental experiences, but I don’t know what they make of what I’m sharing with them. Are they dismissing or absorbing?

Through the Veil

I’ve always considered what this is like to be, “seeing through the veil.” A couple minutes after explaining my current situation to a friend of mine I was pleased to see a sentence emerge from a book that arrived today:

The veil sometimes becomes transparent or its corners are lifted even for the ordinary hearer of the world; but it is never entirely removed. – Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, p. 91, Sarasvati and Her Consorts

David Frawley’s explanation of my ascendant answers an important question for me. Said of Cancer ascendants.

They are receptive and can become contemplative when they open up to the spiritual life and are usually of a devotional bent of mind. Yet what they follow they will represent and project to the world at large. Once they feel connected they gain confidence, initiative and power and can shine over others like the Moon. Once they learn how to be receptive to truth, they can do great service in life and act with great power. – David Frawley, Astrology of the Seers

And then I ran into this.

Mātṛkā means unknown, unrealized mother. So long as the mystery of Mātṛkā is not realized, she is a source of bondage or limitation. When her mystery is realized, she becomes the source of liberation. – Jaideva Singh, Siva Sutras, p. xxxii

What’s interesting is that the Mātṛkās were originally believed to be a personification of the seven stars of the star cluster the Pleiades constellation, which resides in the Nakṣatra Kṛttikā, one of the two Nakṣatras that helped raise Budha. The reason they aelre unrealized is because of the hidden truth behind their stories that must be shone. I refer to truth to my son as the “river of truth,” and when the Truth fails to live, darkness and resistance to the flow of life is created. Swaha impersonated each of these 6 stars, who were once wives of great sages. She did this to unite with Agni, whom she desired. Because of his infatuation with them, he rejected her. But as them, she united with him and suppressed his seed so not to allow these wives to be accused of infidelity. This power, the resulting life of their unions, however, was too great to suppress. It spontaneously erupted into a powerful boy, Skanda. With his birth also erupted rumors that he was the son of these wives. Unrealized mothers. Swaha was only able to take the form of 6 of 7 sages, so the 7th remained free from this dramatic tale. Despite her husband, Vishvamitra, and his attempt to free the Truth and banishment of the other wives, the other rishis did not listen and divorced them. The mothers, who had lost control of their chastity to the great Swaha, were in such torment that they asked Skanda to elevate them to the celestial, where they remained forever as the six Pleiades. After this kerfuffle, and Agni’s desires fulfilled, Swaha married Agni. So, although these mothers appear as victims, it’s as if they have been imprisoned by their own ability to feel pleasure, to lose control of the Self and get caught up in the illusion. Emotion, desire, and will are such strong forces here. When you realize the Truth, that to bring something into this world through passions of the Maya. When you realize this mystery and understand the truth, you are liberated from its bondage. Although they were not the true mothers of Skanda, the forms of Swaha that they allowed to form inside them were. Although that’s okay, it resulted in their bondage. Perhaps when they realize this they will free themselves, these Mātṛkās.

Indra feared what resulted from succumbing to desire (perhaps it it responsible for chaos, which expands, complicates, and leaves too much room for disorder in his web), so he prompted the Mātṛkās to destroy their creation. Resistant, these mothers were overwhelmed by love for Skanda that they began to product milk, filling the Milky Way, and feeding Skanda. It was then that Kali took him as his own son. There may be something to be said about the tear between order/restriction and chaos/play/embracing the Maya and the gifts it produces that distinguishes strictness and the accepting nature of Tantra. Through acceptance of emotion, passion, action, will in this world, realization of what the illusion is and then realizing how to act appropriately you free yourself from the bondage of the illusion and experience an enlightened state.

Receptive to truth. Realization of the mystery (although this doesn’t mean solving the mystery). For me, a gift from Sarasvati, and the key may lie in the power of Rāhu. Swati’s symbol is coral, which has strong intuitive and psychic properties. Coral tried to find its way into my life via a guru bead on my red mala, but I rejected it. Twice since then has the mala broken at the guru bead, keeping all other beads in tact while completely rejecting both guru beads. Perhaps the correct path was to allow the coral to enter my life when it wanted to. Maybe now I have the chance to right my previous rejection.

Riding the Fence/Balancing Worlds

The trick seems to be how to hold onto this realization while still remaining attached to the material world, hanging onto responsibility and interacting in the way a person would here. Now I truly understand the difference between Ari Ripu and Aya. This makes so much more sense now. The body cannot hold onto what the truth fully, completely is. Only parts, bits. The moment I make the effort to put it into some form, sequence of words to put it on paper or onto a keyboard it completely disappears, dissipates. It takes me days to get it back sometimes, and then I struggle to hold onto it long enough that I can fully digest it without it being blown away by the messiness of the mind. I thought it was language before… Maybe it really is just the mind.

But I cannot completely detatch from the body. Is this what jiva muhkti was? What was being liberated while still living? Bottom-right page of Śiva Sūtras. Even my pupils wouldn’t contract at the eye doctor. It reminded me of reactions to hallucinatory drugs. You’re somewhere else, not here anymore.

According to Jaideva Singh’s exposition on Siva Sutra 1.18, “it is not necessary for the aspirant to lock himself up in a room and plunge into trance in order to realize the delight of Self. He can find this delight in the ordinary, normal course of life if he is midful of the subject-object relation which is involved in every bit of knowledge. …In that feel of the Self, he will experience the perennial joy of I-consciousness. This is the ever-present joy of samadhi.”

Mercury’s Retrograde Motion/The Rational Mind (See: Budha)

The rational mind, Budha, maybe even the Moon (Martka) and general mental condition, is the obstruction, and during Mercury retrograde this blockage is shaken up. The door is opened. Budha’s absence or debilitation allows for less of the separation between material and the Truth. The graha is a product and servant of Maya, separator of celestial families, which maybe is why he is two-faced. Could he exist in both realms, facilitating both according to its orbit, serving the true and spiritual when in retrograde and the true and material otherwise? Rationality certainly has a negative effect on the ability to see the true truth of the world around us. But that rationality keeps us materially responsible, or at least aware. Absence of this makes us more materially clumsy, unprepared, more likely to run into logistical hangups, but much more in touch with the spiritual. My Merc retro advice: the blockage is removed. Thrive on the other side!

Because that (Mātṛkā) is the basis (of all limited knowledge), therefore, one is deprived of the investigation of the inner non-difference and all one’s knowledge is outward-turned without without ceasing for a moment. Therefore, it is rightly maintained that all such knowledge is the cause of bondage. – Śiva Sūtras 1.4, translation by Jaideva Singh

My Vata turns on at exactly 2pm every day, and especially during Mercury retro it seems. Maybe my body can’t handle the intense connection. 2pm may need to be my special work-it-out time (meditate, exercise, asana, something). Not suppress. Does a depressant suppress or dismiss? Ah. The rational mind resists the drive to thrive in a world it can’t understand. There is now tension. Meditate on the other side, let it go. Where does 2pm appear in a birth chart?

The more rational, the more materially responsible and aware you are in Ari Ripu, the less you can see through the veil into truth and have awareness of the fluid that surrounds us in the exist.

You can’t find answers in the world as you expect to experience the world… Only once you can dismiss the fluid manifestations that constitute the Maya. The answers *are* in the world once you can see that. I think perhaps because the other exists almost in the same space as this one, or it at least offers a way to communicate with the other through the strings, the wires, the means of communication that our incarnations are familiar with. It’s like there are translators… You just have to see them and be willing enough to not only hear them, but also acknowledge their existence in plain sight when your own senses tell you that they don’t exist.

Still, my rational mind helps me understand this through communication of it to myself. Experience to words to thought to comprehension and somehow hopes that the truth survives the translation. As much of a prisoner we are to the mind, it is the only thing that our bodies have to communicate it though means that others who cannot see can begin to understand. I feel it important to communicate not only to rationalize and translate, but also to document my own experience for personal purposes… Because of the faulty mind I feel cannot always permanently retain the connections that I only momentarily catch a glimpse of. Maybe later words can help reconnect the rational mind.

But I have no teacher. My teacher is simply, truly knowledge (jñāna/Guru) itself as a result of realization.

Budha as Key to Duality (See: Budha)

Just as Budha represents the rational mind as a source of mokṣa blockage, so can/do other Grahas. Sūrya, for example, is a source of egotism. I remember learning about three spiritual Grahas, which I believe were Shani, Jupiter, and maybe Ketu. These grahas represent discipline and modesty, knowledge (jñāna), and removal from the material. Just as Budha is often two-sided, Budha can both facilitate the acquiring of Truth and knowledge as well as serve as a source of criticism and worldly analyzing that can result in the chaining of oneself to the material realm. If we break Budha up into multiple facets/parts, perhaps we can discover how best to use the Budha within us for either purpose. Saraswati, being one facet of Budha, appears to be instrumental in pursuing the truth when isolated.

Budha is said to be two-sided, can be benefic, can be malefic, can go either way in so many cases. I think that Budha is key to understanding dualities and especially key to understanding the difference between the ultimate manifestation of dualities: the material and spiritual realms. In a way, Buha is the duality. Budha, I think, is much more important in a chart than I have previously been led to believe.

The true son of Candra (emotion) and Tara, Brihaspati (knowledge) believed him to be his son. Just as Budha is torn between being the son of emotion and of knowledge, he is also the key to understanding both. Knowledge is key to understanding Truth and reaching mokṣa, while emotion is “energy in motion” and is more tied to the energies of this Maya and how we can materially experience the divine. Although the mind is ultimately subject to emotion, it can be used to obtain knowledge, jñāna, and also help us reach liberation. So it plays a dramatic role. On one hand it can be the foot in the door that can lead to mokṣa; on the other, however, it ties you down to the material world – and even tighter the more you try to engage the spiritual using your mental capacities.

I wonder, depending on the position of and/or influence on Budha, whether or not you can determine in which realm Budha most gravitates, or naturally exists for a person. In addition, Budha’s two rāśis, Kanyā (Virgo) and Gemini (Mithuna) are also representative of the difference in these dualities. They both work in a world that focuses on dualism and polarities, but Kanya brings disparate things together, organizes, and joins, while Mithuna is more responsible for division and separation. Kanyā/Virgo is “divine discontent and integration,” while Gemini/Mithuna is “changing polarity and duality.”

Back to the story of baby Budha. Tara was once the student of Brihaspati (knowledge), representative of the Truth, but one day Candra (emotion) enters the picture and everyone is thrown for a ride. A child was born to Tara, which Brihaspati (Jupiter) believed to be his own, but Tara admits that baby Budha (the rational mind) is actually the son of Candra (emotion), permanently linking our manifested minds, our brains, with the physical world. Although Budha is not the true son of knowledge, he is the son of Tara, who was the student of Brihaspati. The knowledge is passed on to Budha through the teachings to his mother, not through heavenly genetics. This is how knowledge is best gained. You need not be the son of a teacher to understand his teachings.

While some believe that Budha was accepted by Brihaspati as his son, others believe that Budha was given to Rohinī and Kṛttikā to be raised. Both Nakṣatra, Rohinī and Kṛttikā, reside within the constellations/rāśis of Taurus, which is ruled by/an aspect of Sukra… and Sukra was Candra’s only ally during the great war that ensued between Candra and Brihaspati. In fact, Brahma believed that the world would be abolished (permanent severance), if the battle continued, so he ended it and returned Tara to Brihaspati (knowledge), thus retaining the link with the spiritual. This tearing clearly being representative of the division between the material and spiritual realms.

If Kanyā/Virgo yearns to reunite the two worlds, and Mithuna/Gemini instrumental in keeping the division, the condition and situations of these two signs in a birth chart can certainly determine in which direction an individual may lean in. Is Kanyā key to integration, to yoga? Does Budha exist differently in Rohinī and Kṛttikā, those being the asterisms who raised him?

Just as there are two aspects to each planet, Sūrya and Candra represent the two sides of the Self. Rohinī and Kṛttikā are like two sides of the self (ruled by Candra and Sūrya) that reflect upon Budha (the rational mind), giving Budha two methods in function. Rohinī is expressive and feeling, with its primary motivation being mokṣa. Kṛttikā, on the other hand, is stubborn, aggressive, and determined, with its primary motivation being truth. Rohinī achieves liberation through feeling and emotion, while Kṛttikā gets there through pure bull-headedness, arriving via satya.

As Candra (i.e., through Rohinī) allows us to experience the divine in the material world (through emotion), Sūrya (i.e., through Kṛttikā) allows us to assertively pursue and contain the knowledge (jñāna) needed to ascertain truth, which in turn helps opens the door to liberation. Tara fell for both satiation of emotion (Candra) and knowledge (Brihaspati), indicating two distinct paths of the mind. In the end, Brahma returned Tara to Brihaspati (knowledge). Emotion is easy to fall for, is fed by the senses, and appears to be a set of instruments, meters, and gauges to experience the Maya. Emotion and psychology may be a complete manifestation of this realm, but it is a gift that allows us to explore and discover the divine truth. Tara’s distraction from Brihaspati’s teachings was undeniable and gave birth to the rational mind, a tool which we can also use to understand knowledge (jñāna) and truth (satya). However, using Budha to communicate learned truth itself, whether through teaching or emotion, is like a Chinese finger trap. It is something felt and self-realized, not communicated.

Perhaps seeing both worlds as one, feeling joined between them, is more likely when there is a strong presence in Kanyā/Virgo. And, of course, it depends on the planet. For me, my ascendant lord (Candra, the true father of Budha) is in Kanyā. Emotion taking sides with what joins the two realms together. (As well, those realms represented in a chart as being 6th and 12th houses). At present, Sūrya, Rāhu, and Budha are all transiting Kanyā, with Budha in retrograde (disabled from its norm, allowing for more mental freedom). Mercury retrograde through Kanyā sounds like a wonderful period for everyone interested in connecting with the Truth.

It’s also important to note that Budha’s wife is Ilā, the truth-vision/revelation of the truth.

Investigate Further

And the other planets? If liberation and union is a major goal, let’s look at the chart through that lens.

Iccha, jñāna, kriya – graha associations?

Additions

Once you lose touch with the body there must be a trick to regaining control of it – this time with better knowledge. Perhaps this is the opportunity that yogis take to practice āsana. The body becomes less of an incarnation of all-encompassing imprisonment and more of a simple vehicle that should be maintained. Maybe the body starts to reject itself once you begin to disconnect from it.

Do I need to forget that my heart exploded in a dream and I had serious physical manifestations?

I need to make sure that I return to previous writings (only those that fell into/around Budha/Mercury Retrograde periods or periods in which I was definitely tapped in) and figure out where they fall into the categorizations of my most recent perspectives.

[Also… messages via Facebook conversations.]

Knowledge

Regarding the “knowledge” or realization… I’ve called this “knowing” seeing and have used them interchangeably when referring to my enlightened state. Lately I have understood more how knowing is seeing and understand that knowledge, especially of the truth, reaches much farther than the knowledge we have used since birth. To understand and see, through our eyes, the world that so much of the rest of us seem to thrive in as if from another perspective is to know the difference.

[insert stuff from p. 72 of Sri Aurobindo’s book, re: seeing/knowing]

To be led to know something ground-breaking to the self, but then find yourself still here and part of the illusion, is splitting. The energy that I’m taking in, as if the filter or veil is removed, is so hard to handle that I often find myself having panic attacks and wake up in the middle of the night with a vibrating body or a burst capillary. I can normally process the prāṇa through routine means, but my senses are so unobstructed right now that I take everything in, and the only way I can ease my body in a way that results in no physical symptoms is to return my consciousness to the other realm. At that time the physical manifestations dissipate. I often feel surges of energy up my spine. Sometimes I can make them surge at will, and sometimes they extend from my spine down to my arms and out of my hands. it feels like I hold balls of pure energy, electric, infinitely full, in the palms of my hands. And all of this happens in waking life, through the routines of my day. I understand this world much better from the other perspective. You cannot see the forest through the trees. So I look for breadcrumbs, signs, throughout the day to keep myself on the path, to swim through the world by the means of the path before me, what I experience as Truth, what is the supreme state. To go beyond the mind and ego and “swim in the nectar of supreme bliss,” as Sally Kempton said her guru used to say. Unfortunately, I do not remain in this state and only get a glimpse here and there when astrological influences are not in place and I’m able to remain in such a state all day long.

The signs are everywhere, and happen most often when I’m closest to my path. I have tried to take notes, as best I can, although I have a feeling they will mean so much less not being in the same place… because I fear that knowing the Truth does not persist. It can easily be forgotten, like closing your eyes and not remembering what a face truly looks like. The only way to experience light through vision is to open your eyes. When the veil is completely lifted, perhaps then will the knowing, the realization persist indefinitely. Maybe the notes I leave can at least be used as bookmarks – to remember where I left off the next time I have my eyes open. I talk about this like I know the experience and perspective will soon end. It’s already getting harder to recognize the breadcrumbs. They’re still there, but I don’t react so instantaneously to them as I have in previous days. The difference between the two worlds is significant. To live in one, while knowing the other… it’s freeing. Feeling the need to communicate the experience has persisted, but to communicate something that can only be known and not explained feels frustrating to the material mind. Knowledge only appears to persist in this realm through oral and written communication, but our language is incapable of transmitting the true knowledge. [insert snippet from blog about language]